“I have so much time on my hands, I don’t even know what to do with myself,” said no teacher EVER. Teachers never have enough time, between grading, and planning, and actually teaching, and innovating, and learning, and the list goes on. Often teachers get burned out and either the students suffer or they leave the profession.
I do not foresee any significant policy change in the future to change this. However, something has come along that may help: Artificial Intelligence. AI can help us in so many ways: help write lesson plans, help with content creation, help grading, help writing emails, help making assessments, and help lesson creation.
Of course new things are coming out all the time, but I’d like to share some of the resources I have already found useful.
Content Creation:
- Gamma – creates powerpoints. You can tell it just one topic, such as “Atoms.” However, there is also an option to transform text into a presentation. You can copy and paste things like your lesson plans. Once it creates a document for you, you can chat with the AI to make changes, such as include pictures or shorten text. One teacher at my school even asked it to obey the “Death by Powerpoint ” rules and it was able to without any further information.
Lesson Creation/Lesson Plans
- ClassX – creates both a lesson plan and a lesson. The difference is that the lesson creator gives you a reading passage, some questions to answer and 3-5 activity ideas. The lesson plan creator breaks down the lesson for you by amount of time for each section and includes objectives.
- ChatGPT – can write anything for you really, but I love it for lesson planning because you can collaborate with it. If you don’t like what it gave you you can ask for a revision. If you want it to be more specific, give you student directions, create a rubric, etc, it can do that.
Assessment Creation:
- QuestionWell – creates multiple choice questions from text. For example, you can copy and paste the transcript from a Youtube video, an article you have assigned the students to read or even passages from their textbook. You can give it as a quiz, or allow you to download in format you need for things like Gimkit, Kahoot and GoogleForms.
Apps we already know and love are also starting to include AI. Two in particular I would recommend checking out:
- Edpuzzle – write questions and grades extended response
- Quizizz – helps you create content and questions
One more site I would like to highlight is MagicSchools.ai. I haven’t had a chance to really dive into it, but I know several teachers who rave about it, and it really does seem to do everything.
Tips:
- The more information you can give it, the better the output will be
- Be sure to read over everything before sharing it with the students
- Model ethical and effective AI use for students.
I heard recently that we should treat AI as a copilot, not autopilot. I think this is a good phrase to keep in mind and to share with our students.
